Last night, within the girdle of Houghton’s walls, Harvard’s own Hyperion Shakespeare Company worked on our imaginary forces, staging five scenes from Shakespeare on four unworthy scaffolds throughout the library. Visitors jumped o’er time, from room to room, to behold the swelling scene! Thank you Hyperion!…
Sherlock shoots up, in shorthand
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Among the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library took a particular collecting interest in his second Sherlock Holmes novel, The sign of the four. The novel’s opening lines, here quoted from the…
Print, Manuscript and the Education of Women in Renaissance Italy
Houghton Library has recently acquired a copy of an important book in the history of the education of women, Annibale Guasco’s Ragionamento. Annibale Guasco (1540-1619) composed this educational treatise for his eleven-year-old daughter, Lavinia, as she entered the service of the Duchess of Savoy. Annibale recorded her humanist education at home and under his direction…
“The Physical Impossibilities of Death in the Mind of Someone Living”
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Damien Hirst is a world-renowned (and criticized) English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector, said to be the wealthiest living artist from the United Kingdom. In his I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere,…
More lobster sheet music
No quadrilles, but more lobster sheet music. Here are two pieces for piano, once again featuring ladies in large hats (see previous post) Published in Cleveland … lobsters are an exotic menu item in Cleveland perhaps?…
Xenophobia and the rise of Dr. Fu Manchu
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. Among recently-cataloged volumes in the Santo Domingo Collection is this small gathering of works by Sax Rohmer (1883-1959), an English novelist whose signal creation is the villainous crime lord Dr. Fu Manchu. Born Arthur Henry Ward, Rohmer…
Caliban inspires Klingon makeover
“You have never experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon.” At least that’s what Klingon chancellor Gorkon tells Spock in The Undiscovered Country, the last installment of the original Star Trek film series. Like self-serious English majors, Klingons quote the Earth-poet Shakespeare more than any other author—yes, sometimes even in their…
Vultures of vice!
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. True Detective Mysteries, called True Detective starting with its October 1939 issue, was a magazine about crime and criminals published for over 70 years. Beginning in 1924, it was often regarded as the first true crime…
New on OASIS in April
Finding aids for two newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month: Processed by: Irina Klyagin Tony Straiges set designs and models (MS Thr 1317) Berkeley Sutcliffe costume designs (MS Thr 1323)…
April Fool’s Day: odd sheet music
The Historical Sheet Music Collections at Houghton have been yielding some weird cover art lately. Here are a few in honor of April foolishness: This song tells the story of a gentleman escorting a lady friend to a cabaret, where she pawns him off on a female friend enamoured of his wealth; her friend calls…